


until i hear your voice

by tatemarkhams



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, F/M, Kind of a Happy Ending, Major character death - Freeform, Pain, lotsa angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 12:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9236105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatemarkhams/pseuds/tatemarkhams
Summary: People like Adrien Agreste were heroes. They were meant for greatness, for stories of epic adventures and endless love.They weren’t supposed to die at twenty-five.(in which Marinette is left to pick up the pieces of her life after Adrien's unexpected death)





	

**Author's Note:**

> this has been plaguing my thoughts since Christmas Eve and i spent that night crying about this but i wanted to get the first chapter of YBSH done before working on this  
> but that's done now so here it issss

 

Marinette doesn’t argue when Adrien hits the snooze button on the alarm clock that morning.

 

Instead, she presses herself closer to him, her back to his chest as he kisses her bare shoulder and mumbles “five more minutes” against her skin. She absently traces the lines of his arms down to his hands. She keeps her eyes closed as she draws circles on his palm and breathes him in. And they drift back to sleep there, in a mess of limbs and blankets and they let five minutes turn to fifteen.

 

_So they’re a little late to work, who cares?_

She would have, if she had known.

 

Had she known, she would have dragged Adrien out of bed the second the clock rang. Maybe those fifteen minutes would have made a difference.

 

Or maybe she would wave never let him leave at all. She would have convinced him to stay with her and they would have spent the day in their pajamas playing video games.

 

If Marinette had known that was the last morning she had with Adrien, she would have done something to make sure it wasn’t.

 

* * *

 

The call came while she was filling out fabric orders to be sent out that night.

 

Her mind is only half-focused on the task at hand, the other half occupied by other things. For all the love she has for her work, all she wants to do is get this over with and go home because tonight, _tonight she would tell him ---_

 

The shrill sound of her ringtone cuts off her thoughts, an unknown number flashing on her screen. She doesn’t think much of it as she accepts the call. As a major designer of Gabriel’s brand, people are always trying to get a hold of her one way or another.

 

“Is this Marinette Dupain Cheng?” The voice on the other end of the line was grim.

 

“This is her.”

 

And then she feels the ground cave under her feet.

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t even think.

 

She runs.

 

Maybe she should’ve called Adrien’s father or her parents or their friends. Maybe she should’ve told someone first and asked them to go with her.

 

She doesn’t.

 

She just runs to him.

 

* * *

 

_It’s not him._

 

The boy in front of her looks deceptively like Adrien – the same blond hair, the faint scars on his shoulders from their akuma-fighting days, the silver ring on his finger. But it’s not Adrien.

 

Because Adrien’s eyes shone with humor and the occasional mischievous glint. His mouth was always curled into a smirk or that smile of his that made sunshine look dull.

 

The boy in front of her doesn’t have any of that.

 

“It’s not him,” she tells the coroner. “ _It’s not my Adrien_.”

 

But she chokes on her words, her own body robbed of oxygen, and she drops to the floor on her knees. The lifeless hand in front of her becomes her lifeline. She holds on to it, squeezes it just a little too hard, and waits for him to flinch, to squeeze back, to do _anything._

 

But there was only the cold cruelty of the ring on his finger against her palm.

 

* * *

 

Plagg doesn’t talk.

 

Tikki holds him while he stares somberly at the front door of the apartment, like he was waiting for Adrien to walk in and announce that just pulled of the world’s biggest and dumbest prank. But he isn’t coming back. He’s never coming back.

 

Plagg knows this.

 

Because there are only a few things worse than the feeling when a kwami loses its wielder. And Plagg recalls every microsecond of Adrien’s soul being brutally ripped from his, trying and failing to grasp at the last few strands of their connection. He recalls feeling like he’s been turned inside out when the connection finally broke and he was hovering over Adrien’s lifeless body.

 

There are only a few things worse than that. And one of them is having to live with it after.

 

* * *

 

Marinette doesn’t talk either.

 

She doesn’t cry.

 

She is lost in their apartment _,_ walking around the kitchen and the living room, _looking for him. Looking for Adrien._ Because his books are still on the coffee table with receipts stuck between the pages, and he promised to make dinner tonight, and Adrien was never one to disappear when he had things to do still.

 

* * *

 

Her parents arrive half an hour later.

 

Before she can say a word to them, a strangled sob escapes her throat and she breaks. Tears cloud her vision but they somehow manage to walk her to the couch and sit her between them.

 

She curls in her mother’s lap, feeling small and helpless, wishing she could evaporate. She hears the sound of wailing filling the apartment and realizes that it’s _her_ _voice._ The unfairness of it all ruins her and she screams and screams until her throat is raw. She screams as if it can somehow bring him back.

 

Adrien had always said that she was the strongest person he knew. But she feels weak. She was crumbling, falling to pieces so fast and she didn’t know how to _unbreak_.

 

“Oh, Marinette. I’m sorry.” Her father says, running a hand through her hair. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

 

“I never even got to tell him that we’re going to have a baby.”

 

* * *

 

He was Chat Noir.

 

Brave and dedicated, if a little bit reckless.

 

Losing him in battle used to be her greatest fear. She has never considered the possibility of something as mundane as a car accident taking the love of her life away from her.

 

Because they’ve gone through so much together – teenage crushes, identity reveals, neglectful fathers, saving the world, and everything in between.

 

They were _heroes_.

 

They were meant for greatness, for stories of epic adventures and endless love. _They weren’t supposed to die at twenty-five._

 

* * *

 

Living alone is painful.

 

Her parents come over all the time, and so do Nino and Alya. She knows they try to talk to her, they try to make her eat, try to make sure she’s taking care of herself and her unborn child.

 

She does all these things mechanically and then she goes to bed at night and _she_ _wonders._

 

She wonders if it will ever stop hurting.

 

She wonders if she’ll ever stop missing him.

 

* * *

 

Chloe doesn’t coddle her.

 

She blasts through the door of the apartment one morning like the hurricane she is, and finds Marinette lying on the couch, watching one of Adrien’s anime. Chloe makes a comment on how pathetic she looks which Marinette chooses to ignore, turning back to the TV instead.

 

“Get up. I’m taking you to work.”

 

“I don’t wanna go to work.”

 

“How long are you gonna do this to yourself?” Chloe whines. “You can’t just stop living because Adrien is –“

 

“You don’t understand, Chloe.”

 

“I don’t understand _what_?” Chloe snaps, the look of hurt on her face was unmistakable. “You’re not the only one who lost him, Marinette. He was the closest thing I had to a brother. I loved him too. _We all did_. So, talk to us. Stop hogging Adrien even in death.”

 

She begins to tremble and she tries to steady herself because she really didn’t want to cry in front of Chloe. All her reservations fly out the window when Chloe kneels on the couch beside her and wraps her arms around Marinette’s shoulder.

 

Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine being comforted by Chloe Bourgeois as she cried, and all she can currently think about is that she’s getting snot on Chloe’s shirt and she might make her pay for it.

 

“I don’t know how to fix myself. I don’t know what to do.”

 

“Tell you what you’re going to do.” Chloe says, pulling away from her and pointing at her like she wasn’t just hugging her a second ago. “Forget work. You’re gonna take a shower, you’re gonna get gressed, and then we’re gonna go shopping.”

 

* * *

 

 

Marinette sits on the lounge of a luxurious boutique (way above her price-range) while she watches Chloe examine a collection of baby clothes.

 

A perfectly manicured finger rests on her chin as she holds each piece of clothing under scrutiny, tossing the one’s that didn’t make the cut to the side and passing the ones she deemed acceptable to their shopping attendant.

 

Marinette notes that Chloe doesn’t even bother checking the other section of the boutique labeled _for boys._

 

“How come you’re only buying dresses? It’s too early to tell whether the baby’s a boy or a girl.”

 

Chloe looks at her for a moment and then proceeds to shove a couple more dresses to their attendant.

 

“Trust me. _It’s a girl_.”

 

* * *

 

Alya and Nino came to see her again.

 

She actually talks to them this time. Because as much as it pains her to admit it, Chloe was right. She isn’t the only one who lost Adrien, and having her friends with her makes it a little more bearable.

 

They talk about nothing and everything – Nino’s latest gig, Marinette’s pregnancy, Alya’s sisters going to lycee - as if the three of them have an unspoken agreement not to address the weight of the elephant in the room. Until Nino breaks it.

 

“I miss him so much.”

 

And then all they can talk about is Adrien.

 

_“Remember in college when Adrien had the biggest fanboy crush on Ladybug?”_

_“Remember when his face when Marinette finally asked him out?”_

_“Remember that Halloween he dressed up as Sailor Moon?”_

_“Remember his first day in public school?”_

 

They fill the silences with jokes and puns that Adrien would say if he was there. They go for back and forth, each one worse than the last. They go for hours and hours until midnight, until tears are falling from their eyes and it was impossible to tell whether it was from laughter or longing.

 

* * *

 

Marinette learns that Gabriel Agreste deals with grief the opposite way she does. He buries himself in his work until it’s all that’s in his mind, until it makes him forget how to feel.

 

He calls for Marinette in his office when she finally comes back, and for a minute, she thinks he might fire her for missing work for weeks. When she comes in, she sees that he’s wearing a permanently haunted look on his face – one to match Marinette’s.

 

Gabriel doesn’t fire her. He asks her to sit and he slides a white box with a red ribbon across the table to her.

 

“It was in his room in the mansion. I thought you might want it.”

 

Marinette lifts the cover carefully, slowly, like she was disarming a bomb. There was nothing in it but a piece of paper – no, it wasn’t paper. It was a heart-shaped card with her handwriting on it. _The very first love letter she gave Adrien._

 

She didn’t even know he kept it.

 

“Thank you.”

 

“My son…” Gabriel begins so quietly. “He loved you very much.”

 

It wasn’t merely a statement of fact. It was an expression of gratitude, of sorts. A _thank you for being there for him when I wans’t._

 

“He loved you, too. He always has.” Marinette tells him.

 

Because she thinks that even though Adrien has long since forgiven his father for his absence in his childhood, Gabriel will always blame himself for the years that they lost.

 

It wasn’t fair.

 

How could they have lost Adrien when he and his father were in the middle of repairing their relationship?

 

How could they have lost Adrien when he and Marinette were just beginning their life together?

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was two months after the accident when she finally gathers the strength to go through Adrien’s belongings.

 

She finds _it._

It was tucked beneath his socks in his drawer because Adrien was always very original and creative when it came to hiding places. A small black velvet box with a diamond ring and three little words engraved on it.

 

_For My Lady._

 

Plagg finds here there, sitting on their bed ( _because she couldn’t bring herself to call it just hers; everything will always be theirs_ ) as she slips the ring on her finger. It fits perfectly.

 

“I helped pick that out,” Plagg tells her. “Do you like it?”

 

“I love it,” she says, holding out her hand to him. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

 

“I thought it would only make things harder for you. I’m sorry.”

 

She brings Plagg closer to her chest – their version of a hug – and she tells him that it’s okay. She doesn’t mind. She wants to know everything, wants to hear every story he has of Adrien because that was all they have now.

 

Plagg tells her that Adrien was supposed to propose on their anniversary, a week from now.   

 

* * *

 

It gets better.

 

It sounded like a cheap lie when people told her that a couple of months ago. But she finds out that its true.

 

There are still times when she wakes up crying in the middle of the night because the bed feels _too empty_ , or when she smells something cooking in the kitchen and she runs there only to find her parents who had temporarily moved in with her and she ends up sobbing like a child in front of them.

 

She blames it on the hormones.

 

She thinks it might stop hurting someday.

 

But she thinks she will never not miss him.

 

* * *

 

It’s a girl. They found out yesterday. She’s having _a girl._

She remembers when they had just moved in to their apartment and Alya had somehow let it slip that Marinette had already named all of her and Adrien’s future children. Marinette ran to the bedroom screaming in mortification and Adrien laughed as he followed her.

 

“Aw, Bugaboo, I think it’s cute.” He said, grinning from ear to ear.

 

Marinette threw a pillow at his face.

 

“Don’t talk to me. I’m so embarrassed right now.”

 

He chuckled and peppered her face with kisses while his hands moved from her back to her waist. A playful expression formed on his face before he began tickling her until she’s laughing with him. And then he kissed her deeply until they were both breathless and she had forgotten why she was even upset in the first place.

 

“I like the name Emma, too.”

 

* * *

 

Marinette doesn’t understand how it’s possible to love someone she hasn’t met yet.

 

But she loves Emma. She loves her so much that sometimes she can’t even believe she’s real.

 

She is. And Marinette can’t wait to finally see her.

 

* * *

 

Emma has blonde hair and green eyes.

 

Although Marinette has never been good at identifying an infant’s facial features, she knew that Emma had gotten her everything from Adrien.

 

She was aware of her parents, Adrien’s father, and their friends in the same room. She could hear them talking. But the moment the nurse handed her child to her, she was all Marinette could see.

 

She was so beautiful in her arms and holding her felt like holding the entire universe. She wished Adrien could hold the universe with her, too. He would have loved it.

 

The nurse asks for the baby’s name but she was too stunned to speak, still unable to look away from daughter she already loved so so much. She hears her mother answer for her instead.

.

The nurse nods, writing it down on his clipboard. “Emma Dupain-Cheng.”

 

“Agreste.” Marinette says as she gazes into a pair of familiar green eyes she hadn’t seen in so long and she feels like she can finally breathe again. “Her name is Emma Agreste.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i just realized when i was about to post this that i didn't write a scene with marinette and tikki
> 
> aaaaanyway, between marinette, chloe, and gabriel, i imagine emma would be the best dressed kid in paris
> 
> i say this all the time but i'm sorry for the mistakes i'm running on 3 hrs of sleep
> 
> your comments are appreciated as always <33


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